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[Otto Sell]

Radio discussion impressions

What did TP say when Naumann told him that he´d "changed sides" and became a
member of the new, at least Red-Green German government?
"Er hat gelacht, sehr gelacht." - he laughed very much.
TP cannot remember having studied at Nabokov´s seminars and Naumann says
he´s not sure if the date of birth (8.5.1937) is correct which I interpret
that it´s not. But he didn´t give the right one of course.
According to him all of Pynchon´s fiction is "eine schwarz-humorige Empörung
über die Sinnlosigkeit des Lebens."

about V.: if someone has read V. he knows the most of the "Pynchon-Cosmos."
Most of it was written in Santa Cruz where he ordered from the library every
book about Germany with illustrations he could get. These illustrations he
described (along with Baedeker´s) and therefore much of writing seems so
very correct in the opinion of people who have seen the real places.

The general opinion was that it´s his great talent that we recognise our
"reality within the text." - or better the other way round: "Man erkennt den
Text in der Wirklichkeit wieder." TP has the ability to make the "eidos" of
things visible, the atmosphere of a given historical moment or era.

what sounds strange first made sense to me along he line of the dicussion:
They all agreed that Pynchon could be read from the latest to the oldest
book, to get some (historical) line from England to California where TP, son
of the Pilgrim Fathers, had fled to in the 60s like so many young Americans
disappointed from the American Dream. Therefore Pynchon likes M&D so much
and couldn´t stop writing. After seven or eight years of following the lives
of two 18-century people it was not easy for him letting the 18-century go.

which gets us to Vineland. The cover was chosen by himself and he insisted
that every edition worldwide should have it - only the British didn´t follow
his wishes. The cutting of the American wood from the M&D-Line to what we
see on the cover of Vineland. I have called Gravity´s Rainbow an ecological
text ("Country for miles around gone to necropolis," ep. 4, p. 27) and they
did too, adding that this image of America stands of course for the whole
world. For Naumann this is what he admires the most, Pynchon´s forseeing
abilities: "a striking similarity to things going on in the DDR." The second
plotline in Vineland (Frenesi and Flash, p. 68ff), the story of the
traitors, was partly written on a parking lot in Germany, impressed by what
he knew about IM`s, those "informers" of the former DDR, transfered to the
hippie/counterforce story in America. I must say to this that if Vineland
which always has been seen as an "Abrechnung" with the hippies for being
only media freaks at last he puts the finger on those as well who had made
their personal peace with THE SYSTEM after 68, which made Reagan possible.

Heinz Ickstadt : "Ich verstehe ihn als Historiker der lebendigen
Gegenwart." - A Historian of the Living Present - "(...) 1984 was a cut -
Dead America and TV as controlling instrument." - Otto sez: remember TP´s
insisting on the matter of control in GR. "Pynchon versteht es, aktuelle
Ereignisse in ein mythisch-klassisches Muster zu stellen." Good versus Bad,
but the sides begin to confuse. Being aware of or having the consciousness
of having lost it´s the principle of hope presented in the fool or in the
children.

Naumann: what has got lost in America - the wonder. Pynchon´s literature is
a "Verfallsgeschichte Amerikas" read backwards. From the Learned English Dog
to the poor Desmond waiting to be fed with fruit loops.

Naumann thinks that Pynchon believes this: "Die technische Welt von heute
ist von übel, aber es geht nicht anders. Das gute Leben ist ein anderes." -
the technical world of today is bad, but there is no other possible. The
good life is something different.

A possible message of M&D: "Die Unerträglichkeit der Situation wird
erträglich durch Haschisch. Es wird in M&D enorm viel gekifft." (M. Naumann)